xjas wrote:I also built myself a serial-port 3D shutter glasses interface straight out of PCVR magazine, issue #2 (1992) (shame there aren't more issues of this online!), which work great for playing with DOS stuff on a CRT monitor. It's not 'fully-immersive' VR but you don't care when dodging 3D missiles in Descent II.
Never seen that magazine before. Thank you very much for posting a link! 😁
Reading it makes me both happy and sad. Imagine what we would have gained if the VR/Cyberpunk genre just had lasted a bit longer..
In the 90s, the break-through in VR seemed to be so close, so real.
Society was ready and cheap shutter glasses were available in game stores (beware, headache and eyestrain ahead!).
Now, 20 years later, we finally have powerful VR head-sets but none is really impressed by it.
Sure, the press sometimes mentions it - as an all-new technology. And professionals play with the idea
of actually using it (medics, architects, engineers, ..)
But that happens in the real world ? The hospital in my city is poor, is still using CRT TVs with RF cabling in the sick rooms,
has no air conditioner, and constantly has PCs problems. They aren't going to use VR for the next 30 years for sure.
The only ones who actually going to benefit from it are projects of prestige or the capital cities (their museums, amusement parks, etc).
Also, VR headsets require a lot of horse power now, making them a novelty item for the wealthy.
Back in the 90s, the average 486 could do it. Sure, a smartphone can also be used for "3D",
but the experience is not quite the same as a space ship floating a few centimeters in front of your monitor.
(The only exception that comes to my mind might be the Nintendo 3DS.)
I know, this sounds like me complaining, but it isn't. I'm just abit dissapointed, 😢
because the euphoria of the 90s is gone and things look so "sulky" now (hope that's the right English term).
Back in the 80s to mid-90s, we had public online terminals in our city (Minitel-like), for example,
and there was this feeling of being on the move to the future.
And People were actually eager to use new technology and learn more about it.
Now, everything is so.. smartphoneized and boring, I don't know. No interests in 3D laser shows anymore,
no arcade cabinets anywhere, no computer camps to go, computer or science shows on TV got cancelled, etc.
Don't get me wrong, I like my Android tablet and wouldn't like to miss it anymore.
But.. things went out of control a bit, I would say. Why does every activity have to involve the use of a smartphone ?
Not that this is a bad thing per se, but why does it have to be always in the centre of attention ?
People are constantly staring at them, not noticing their surroundings anymore.
Also, the interest of understanding the inner workings of their devices is little to no-existend.
In th PC era (up to the late 2000s), even laymen had at least a little bit of interest in such things.
I wished a little bit of the magic of earlier times would come back somewhen, somehow.
Watching the technology evolve was so thrilling back then, I think.
I hope we're not on the way to an Idiocrazy-like future.
Edit: I forgot to make something clear: I'm not living in the past (well, ok, sort of I do ^^) and really do approve many acquisitions of modern times.
Kids and young-old people can now have access to all kind of technology easily. But on the downside, they loose the connection to the internals and
the understanding of the underlying basics. For example, an seven year old of the 1960s was able to build or fix a radio (there were DIY kits for them),
-yet even more importantly- he/she did understand the nature of it. In the 80s it was similar - kids with their Amigas did learn to operate the machine, maybe
even to program. But unlike to today, they also sometimes learned to wire up a robot arm, to upgrade their machines on their own.
There were lots of magazines telling them howto solder in some RAM chips or to replace the 68000 by an 68010. Of course, not all of them succeded with doing so,
but they at least tried to do so. So what I'm trying to say is: People of all ages had to use their brains, develops skills and had to acquire some
basic knowledge of the machine. Now everything is hi-level. Developers of tomorrow may be great a creating software, but don't know a thing about how a machine works.
Ergo, they can't fix it on their own. In an all-digital future this could be disastrous, because without working technology, they can't call the few remaing people who are knowable.
Edit: Shrinked the not-so on-topic parts of my post. I don't want to overload this nice threads with my thoughts.
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
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